


pal o' me heart

by the_stars_never_rise



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25670830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_stars_never_rise/pseuds/the_stars_never_rise
Summary: tsukki and his mother live in a small house one street over from yamaguchi. they grew up together; each one the other's dearest friend.but on tsukki's 16th birthday, a visitor from his mother's enigmatic past appears, throwing off the careful balance of their tiny universe and unearths a myriad of painful secrets.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	1. in the trees

**Author's Note:**

> this was basically inspired from listening to folklore. you know how it goes.

Please picture me  
In the trees.  
\- “seven” by Taylor Swift

“Kei, Yamaguchi is at the door. Will you let him in?” Kei’s mother hollered from the kitchen. Kei opened his eyes slightly. He could hear a fly buzzing around his left ear. Half-heartedly, he waved his hand around his ear and sighed.

“Kei!” He startled awake. “Coming!” He dashed to the door, and grasped tightly on the door knob. Kei pulled it as hard as he could, to no avail. 

“Mom! It’s stuck again!” On hot days like these, the door would get stuck to the doorjamb, and no matter how hard Kei pulled, he couldn’t get it open. He peered out the window, craning his neck to see Yamaguchi waiting on the steps.

“Hold on, let me just dry my hands.” Kei’s mother walked over to the door and gave it one good hard tug, and it flew open, revealing a smiling Yamaguchi on the other side. 

“Sorry Yamaguchi. It was stuck.”

“I know.” Yamaguchi’s smile got wider.

Yamaguchi and Kei sat on the back porch together. It was technically screened in, but the screens were progressively falling down. In fact, most things in Kei’s house were falling apart. Between caring for Kei and holding down 2 jobs, not a lot got done around the house.

Kei looked over at his friend. “Bug.”

“Where?” Yamaguchi whispered, not daring to move lest the bug flied away.

“Hold still.” Kei gritted his teeth and faced Yamaguchi where he lay on the wicker couch. 

“Tsukkiiii,” Yamaguchi hissed between his teeth, “get it!”

Kei lunged toward him, cupping his hands around the bug. He could feel it buzzing around, hopelessly trapped between his palms. He walked over to the squeaky screen door, opened it, then released the bug.

“Tsukki, you know it’s just going to come back,” Yamaguchi said as Kei sat down on the floor with his head resting on Yamaguchi’s knee.

“But I didn’t want to kill it. You know how I feel about killing things.” Kei scowled as if the very thought of killing an innocent creature revolted him.

“It was sucking my blood, Tsukki, it wasn’t innocent,” Yamaguchi replied like he read his mind. 

“Everything’s gotta eat somehow,” Tsukki said fairly. He should know. He knows the sacrifices his mother has made to keep food on the table. 

“I guess you’re right.” Yamaguchi sighed, and closed his eyes. He was lying flat on his stomach on the couch.

“You gonna fall asleep?”

Yamaguchi simply nudged his knee into the back of Kei’s head. And for Kei, that was an answer enough.

It had been Kei and his mother for as long as he could remember. He knew he had a father somewhere, but his mother never mentioned him. So neither did he. 

Yamaguchi had asked once what had happened to him. Kei said he didn’t know, and Yamaguchi never asked him again. That was one of the best things about Yamaguchi. He knew when to leave it be. In Kei’s mind, there some things better left unsaid. 

When Kei thinks of his childhood, he thinks of Yamaguchi. Every memory he has, Yamaguchi would show up with his shining face. He would feel a warm glow. Sometimes, he has trouble remembering exactly what Yamaguchi used to look like. They had all changed so much, but in some ways they were exactly the same. The freckles were the same, for one. The way they would lean on each other was the same too. The several centimeter difference between them.

Yamaguchi was Kei’s most dearest friend. When Kei was older, he read a book where he learned the phrase “pal o’ me heart.” To him, that perfectly described Yamaguchi. 

Closest friend. The pal of his heart.


	2. seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i need to keep writing this lol

Chapter 2

Kei’s birthday was in two weeks. He was turning 16. 16 was a big number. The square root of 16 was 4. And the square root of 4 was 2. Kei liked thinking in numbers. It made things easier to understand. Words were complicated. Things could come out the wrong way. So, it was better if he said less. The less he said, the less things that could go wrong. 

“16!” his mother had said. “It’s a big one. Why don’t we throw a party?” Her endless enthusiasm both annoyed Kei and made him happy.

“Party?” Kei echoed suspiciously. Too many people made him feel uncomfortable and out of his element. He learned that from his mother; she was always particularly weary of large, busy places, which was probably why they had moved to the quiet countryside when he was small.

“Yes, a party. We’ve never had one before here.” Her smiled dimmed slightly when she notices Kei’s scowl.

“But who would we invite?” Kei suddenly remembered how he was the only one of the kids in his class who never had a father or grandparent come visit him during spelling bees and plays. He wasn’t upset, per say, but he felt left out.

“Well, Yamaguchi for one!” his mother tried to cheer him up.  
Kei wasn’t falling for it. “Think of how depressing this ‘party’ would be if it was just us and Yamaguchi. Maybe it would be different if we actually had a family.” Kei knew he hit a nerve there. He hadn’t meant to hurt his mother, just put her off the idea of having a party. 

“Kei,” she replied, her voice suddenly shaky, “there are things you don’t know.”

He sat up, startled. Whenever he brought up her past, or lack thereof, she would shut him down quickly. But this was a strange moment of clarity and transparency he had never seen in his mother before. 

“What things?” 

“I- I can’t say. But all I can tell you is that everything I do, I do to keep you safe. You are my greatest secret.”

Secret from what? Kei thought, and he shivered. 

She continued. “Darling, you just have to trust me. Please tell me you do.”

Kei looked at her eyes, and at the smile wrinkles at the edge of her eyes. “I do,” he said.

She blinked her eyes a few times, and plastered an even brighter smile on her face. “Ok, now what type of cake should we have? Vanilla?”  
Kei nodded his head in agreement. But that conversation had not left his brain.

“Yamaguchi, I’m telling you, it was the strangest thing.” The boys were walking home from school. It had started only a day or so ago, and already they were backed up with homework and summer assignments. Kei knew he was going to have to help Yamaguchi with algebra, but he didn’t mind. Yamaguchi was a good listener.

“So she just admitted to you she was keeping secrets?”

“Yeah, and get this: she said I was her greatest secret. Like, what could she be keeping me a secret from?” Kei scuffed his white tennis shoes across the cracked pavement.

“Or who,” said Yamaguchi thoughtfully. He stopped short. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it was nothing.”

Kei nodded, just to oblige Yamaguchi, and started walking again.

“Dya, I dunno, wanna come over?” We can play Monopoly or something.” Yamaguchi tried to cheer him up.

“Monopoly is a three person game, idiot.” Kei grumbled.

Yamaguchi smiled anyway.

They walked through the front door of Yamaguchi’s house. A raucous noise was coming from down the hall. Yamaguchi and Kei exchanged a look. 

“Noriko,” they said at the same time. Yamaguchi’s little sister Noriko was infamous for the obnoxious noises she would make. At the moment, it sounded like she was hitting some object against the wall.

The boys slipped off their shoes and dropped their heavy backpacks on the floor, walking into the living room.

“We should probably check on Noriko,” Kei said when it looked like Yamaguchi had no interest in seeing what was making the noise.

“Oh alright.”

They walked into her bedroom down the hall from the living room, and saw Noriko bashing the head of her baby doll into the wall.

“Noriko cut it out!” Yamaguchi hollered over the racket.

“But Fumiko was being mean to me!” She pouted.

Kei went over to her, and gently took the doll out of her hands. 

“Tsukishima, tell her to stop!”

“Now Noriko, hurting Fumiko isn’t the way to solve a problem. You have to talk it out with her.”

“Talk it out?” She looked skeptical.

“Yep, and maybe say sorry while you’re at it. Then she’ll say sorry back.”

Noriko brightened. “Ok Tsukishima! You give the best advice.”

“You’re welcome.” If only he could take it himself, and talk to his mother about what she said the other day.

Kei stood up. “Homework time Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi rolled his eyes and made a big show of groaning. “Alright fine.”

“Those exponents are waiting for you.”


End file.
